Artificial Intelligence in Law: Powerful Tool, Not Replacement

Clients are hearing a lot about artificial intelligence, often framed as “robots coming for everyone’s job.” It is reasonable to wonder whether AI will quietly draft your brief, comb through your contracts, or even decide your case.

In reality, AI in the legal profession is much more straightforward and far less dramatic. Used correctly, it is a highly capable assistant that helps lawyers do what they already do: research the law, assess risk, draft documents, and serve clients. It does not replace professional judgment, advocacy, or the attorney–client relationship.

This post walks through how AI is actually being used in law today, how bar associations and courts are regulating it, and what responsible firms do to ensure that AI supplements rather than substitutes for lawyers.

What AI Really Does Inside a Law Practice

1. Legal research, faster and more targeted

Traditional legal research is powerful but time consuming. Modern research platforms like Lexis Nexis, Westlaw, and others now layer machine learning on top of extensive case law databases. These systems can surface leading cases, identify key legal principles, and suggest relevant authority more quickly than keyword searching alone.

The benefit is not that “the computer does the thinking.” It is that lawyers can move from sifting through hundreds of hits to evaluating the most relevant authorities sooner. Attorneys still decide what questions to ask, how to frame the legal issues, and which cases are persuasive for a particular court or fact pattern.

2. Document review and e-discovery

AI has been used in e-discovery for years through technology-assisted review and predictive coding. Newer tools use similar techniques plus generative AI to:

• Prioritize likely relevant documents

• Group large datasets by issues or custodians

• Summarize long email threads or transcripts

Many scholarships note that document review and legal research remain among the most mature and impactful AI use cases in law.

The goal is to reduce the hours spent on “finding the needle” so lawyers can focus on interpreting what those documents mean for liability, strategy, and settlement.

3. Contract analysis and transactional support

Contract review is another area where AI can be a force multiplier. Contract analysis platforms can:

• Compare incoming contracts against a firm’s playbook

• Flag non-standard clauses or missing protections

• Suggest alternative language based on market norms

  
  

Law firms frequently cite examples where they used an AI contract review platform to analyze complex agreements in approximately three minutes, achieving around 90% accuracy. In contrast, a qualified lawyer performing the same task would take roughly four hours, with an accuracy of about 86%. This platform routinely saves clients three to five hours of legal review time per contract and can reduce typical external legal costs significantly.

These tools do not decide what risk is acceptable. They surface issues quickly so a lawyer can decide whether a deviation from standard terms is commercially and legally appropriate for that client.

4. Litigation strategy and risk assessment

Litigators increasingly rely on AI-driven analytics to inform strategy. These tools analyze historical case outcomes, judge-specific patterns, motion grant rates, and timing trends to help lawyers:

• Estimate the likelihood of success on certain motions

• Assess settlement value ranges

• Anticipate how long a case may take to resolve

AI-based predictive analytics can offer “foresight” for litigation strategy, not guarantees. Lawyers still weigh client goals, factual strengths and weaknesses, witness credibility, reputational concerns, and business realities.

5. Practice management, billing, and compliance

AI is not only used on the “substantive” legal side. It is increasingly built into law firm operations:

• Billing and spend management: AI-powered systems flag time entries that deviate from billing guidelines, detect anomalies, and improve transparency in legal spend.

• Conflict checking: Practice management platforms use data analytics and, in some cases, AI techniques to cross-reference parties, affiliates, and matters at scale, reducing the risk of missed conflicts.

• Case management and deadlines: Tools help track deadlines, automate reminders, and organize matter information, which ultimately protects clients by reducing administrative errors.

  
  

These uses do not change the lawyer’s obligations. They simply give firms better tools to meet them.

6. Access to justice and pro bono support

AI is also playing a growing role in closing the justice gap. Studies of legal aid attorneys given access to AI tools show significant gains in productivity, with 90% of participating attorneys reporting that AI increased their productivity and 75% indicating they planned to continue using it.

Legal aid organizations, bar associations, and justice innovation labs are piloting AI-based intake chatbots and triage systems to help screen clients, explain procedures in easy to understand language, and help people find the right resources.

The Pro Bono Institute has highlighted AI’s potential to let pro bono teams reach more clients with the same resources, so long as it is deployed with careful training and ethical oversight.

Again, AI does not replace a lawyer’s advice. It helps more people get to that advice, faster and at lower cost.

Why AI Will Not Replace Lawyers

Judgment, ethics, and advocacy cannot be automated.

Surveys of legal professionals consistently show that lawyers see AI as a tool, not a substitute. A recent Thomson Reuters study found that 96% of legal professionals believe allowing AI to represent clients in court would be “a step too far,” and 83% view using AI to provide legal advice itself as an inappropriate use.

Bar associations and courts are sending a similar message. The American Bar Association’s first formal ethics opinion on generative AI emphasizes that lawyers who use AI must still satisfy their core duties of competence, confidentiality, communication, and reasonable fees. AI does not create an “exception” to existing rules.

AI can help with the work. It cannot be the lawyer.

AI has real limitations that require human oversight

There is also a practical reason AI will not replace attorneys: the technology remains imperfect and must be verified.

A 2024 Stanford HAI study found that legal AI models hallucinated in roughly one out of six benchmark legal research queries, underscoring the need for careful benchmarking and human review. Real-world sanctions against lawyers who submitted filings with nonexistent AI-generated case citations show what happens when this oversight is missing.

Responsible use assumes that:

• AI output is a first draft, checklist, or lead, not a final answer.

• Lawyers confirm all authorities, facts, and citations.

• Firms implement guardrails to prevent confidential information from being fed into public systems.

  
  

Thoughtful vendors and law firms speak in terms of “calibrated trust” in legal AI: accuracy and usefulness must be measured, tested, and continuously monitored rather than assumed.

Ethical Guardrails Around AI in Law: Core duties still apply

Across ABA guidance and state bar opinions, several themes repeat:

• Competence: Model Rule 1.1 has been interpreted to include understanding the benefits and risks of relevant technology, including AI. Lawyers must either develop a reasonable understanding of the tools they use or rely on qualified experts, while still exercising their own legal judgment.

• Confidentiality: Model Rule 1.6 obligations apply fully. The ABA and multiple courts warn that entering confidential or privileged material into public AI tools can risk unauthorized disclosure.

• Communication and fees: If AI meaningfully affects the cost, scope, or methodology of representation, lawyers may need to explain that to clients. Fees must remain reasonable even if AI makes tasks faster.

• Supervision: AI is treated much like a non-lawyer assistant or vendor. Lawyers must supervise how AI is used, review its work, and remain accountable under Model Rules 5.1 and 5.3 analogues.

  
  

Looking Ahead: AI as Part of the Future of Legal Service

AI is already woven into the daily work of many lawyers, from legal research and contract review to docketing and pro bono triage. Used well, it can:

• Increase productivity

• Improve accuracy and risk assessment

• Enhance transparency in billing and matter management

• Expand access to legal information and services for underserved communities

  
  

At the same time, the profession is rightly cautious. Courts and bar associations are reinforcing a simple principle: AI must be used in ways that respect existing ethical duties. Lawyers remain responsible for their work, their advice, and their clients’ confidences, regardless of the technology involved.

For clients, the bottom line is that AI is not a weapon or a replacement lawyer. It is a sophisticated tool that, when carefully supervised, helps attorneys deliver legal services that are more efficient, thorough, and accessible, while preserving the human judgment and advocacy that the legal system depends on.

If you have questions about how AI might affect your legal matters or about AI-related legal risk, those are exactly the kinds of conversations lawyers should be having with their clients now.

Sources

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2. Thomson Reuters, Marjorie Richter, How AI Is Transforming the Legal Profession (Aug. 18, 2025),https://legal.thomsonreuters.com/blog/how-ai-is-transforming-the-legal-profession/

3. Joely Williamson, The Rise of AI in Legal Practice: Opportunities, Challenges, & Ethical Considerations,Colorado Technology Law Journal (Mar. 21, 2025),https://ctlj.colorado.edu/?p=1297

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7. Erin Palmer, AI Ethics in Law: Emerging Considerations for Pro Bono Work and Access to Justice,Pro Bono Institute (Aug. 29, 2024),https://www.probonoinst.org/2024/08/29/ai-ethics-in-law-emerging-considerations-for-pro-bono-work-and-access-to-justice/

8. Stanford HAI / RegLab, AI on Trial: Legal Models Hallucinate in 1 out of 6 (or More) Benchmarking Queries(May 23, 2024),https://hai.stanford.edu/news/ai-trial-legal-models-hallucinate-1-out-6-or-more-benchmarking-queries

9. Thomson Reuters, Ethical Uses of Generative AI in the Practice of Law (Ryan Groff, 2024–2025 materials),https://legal.thomsonreuters.com/blog/ethical-uses-of-generative-ai-in-the-practice-of-law/

10. Esquire Deposition Solutions, New York’s Legal Leaders Issue AI Ethics Guidelines (May 8, 2024),https://www.esquiresolutions.com/new-yorks-legal-leaders-issue-ai-ethics-guidelines/

11. American Bar Association, Formal Opinion 512: Ethical Implications of Lawyers Using Generative AI (July 29, 2024) (PDF),available via LawNext: https://www.lawnext.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/aba-formal-opinion-512.pdf

12. Thomson Reuters, Future of Professionals Report 2024 (global survey data on AI and professionals),https://www.thomsonreuters.com/content/dam/ewp-m/documents/thomsonreuters/en/pdf/reports/future-of-professionals-report-2024.pdf

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